For centuries, human beings have dreamed of flying. All kinds of daredevils have built devices to fly of their own volition. Not all have worked... and not all their pilots survived. Once inventors figured out they needed a balance between weight, power and aerodynamics they were able to get sufficient lift to stay in the air. Here are 10 of the most exciting attempts at personal flight.

Nancy Andreasen wrote After a thorough literary review, Andreasen hypothesized that creatives would have an increased rate of schizophrenia in their family members, without being afflicted themselves. She also looked into whether creativity was hered ...

Imagine that you spend every day working from your beautiful home in California. In the backyard you have a shed laboratory where you develop psychedelic chemicals and meticulously test them on yourself, your wife and your best friends. And for a goo ...

In David N. Jahn's Qualifying his work is impossible, so I'll stop trying to explain it with words. If you haven't seen it, I recommend that you explore Born on February 5, 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, Hans Ruedi Giger was the son of a pharmacist. He t ...

The Kickstarter video for If I had $700 to drop, I'd get one for the HowStuffWorks office, complete with its "copper, brass, chestnut wood and handmade Murano glass" exterior. If you think we're over-caffeinated now, wait until we get one o ...

When I first heard Mike Diamond rap the above lyrics in 1994 I was incredibly excited about the implications of a movement where people were self-sufficient, motivated and productive. 20 years later and that ethos has grown beyond the music scene int ...

I wonder what Peter Carl Goldmark would think if he were alive to know about a I remember watching an interview with Thurston Moore once, where he preached his devotion to vinyl. Moore's theory was that every time you listen to a record, the needle d ...

Let's hope the words, "commence the orbital bombardment" don't enter our vernacular in the near future. Imagine a bundle of metal telephone poles dropped from Earth's orbit onto a target. They'd reach a speed of Mach 10 and have the impact ...

Alexander Bogdanov was an intellectual who persistently attempted to change the world to a logical arrangement he thought would lead to the ideal society. He was also a risk-taker, and while he possessed many of the traits of a genius, in Bogdanov's ...

At the 2012 SXSW Interactive, These acquisitions are where the stacks think the future of our ecosystems lie. What techie hasn't considered submerging into virtual reality since Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" or even "Back To the Futur ...

When history turns back to look at me, I only hope its judgement isn't determined solely by an unsent letter from one of my colleagues. That's the predicament of Much like the principle he's famous for, it's impossible for us to be certain of the ful ...

These individuals all received their PhD before they were 20 years old, when most of us are still struggling to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.
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Whether your community gets only 1-inch (2.5 cm) or 24-inches (60 cm) snow can be a major impediment to getting to school, work or even just the grocery. Luckily, we're always coming up with new ways to live with how snow and ice impact our daily routine. Here's 10 of the best inventions for dealing with snowfall.